


Gift of Wings

by nagia



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Bat-clan fusion, F/M, kinkmeme fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-31
Updated: 2011-05-31
Packaged: 2017-10-19 23:26:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/206364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagia/pseuds/nagia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Archangel tracks a group of thugs to his former protectorate, the Citadel.  Events can only go downhill when his former mentor becomes involved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gift of Wings

It's all coming together nicely: they're stupid enough to congregate right where half the warehouse could fall in on their heads. They're only this stupid because they're small-time; the big prey think big, weigh impossibilities, try to think like the vigilantes that make crime pay so much less. Actual _villains_ would never fall for a stunt like the one he's planning.

But these pathetic crooks? A single perfect shot to an impossible target, and their ridiculous little ploy will burst into flames.

Just for the added satisfaction of knowing it will be all his, the Archangel deactivates the visor. Easy to be the perfect sharpshooter when you've got a visor with LADAR feeding you firing solutions. But this isn't deep space.

He can eyeball it, can do all the math himself. He can play cowboy if he wants to. And isn't that why he's here, in a crouch he's going to pay for tomorrow, with a Viper in his hands? The rifle seems to breathe with him, seems to be waiting as much as he is.

This moment, the one right before he fires, the moment where he takes a deep breath and eases his weight onto the trigger: freedom defined.

* * *

That's not how it happens. It never is.

The Archangel can only watch, half infuriated, half mesmerized, as she crashes in from the roof. The very roof he was going to bring down on the filth huddling beneath it.

He could have fired and walked away. Slipped into armor a little more blue and a lot less white. Left as the Archangel, judging his prey from above, and returned as a detective to check his work from the ground. He could have had what he longs for: both the judgment of the avenger and the solidity of the security officer.

Could have.

And what would have happened to the Spectre?

* * *

She lands on the crate held suspended above them all by the cargo crane. Her fingers latch onto the chain that suspends both her and the crate. She catches links, keeps herself upright and not falling. Her spine arches tense, strained, and he thinks about the way she looked when she let that human biotic put his hands all over her.

Then, just as now, she'd been stiff. Holding herself apart from him, then (away from the ground, now) — and yet leaning into his touch (into the chain, now).

It's like one of those pets humans keep: housecats. Beautiful and lazy and no matter how many meals provided, how many treats given, a little untamed.

No. The Spectre's a lot untamed. Every muscle goes taut; she thrums like a plucked string.

And then she falls.

Just like all the other times, the moments after she hits the ground blur into a long chain of men screaming. The Spectre doesn't use lethal force outside of truly exceptional circumstances, and these thugs, she could annihilate, non-lethally, before she even had her morning coffee.

That doesn't make the scattered seconds any less beautiful. She _flows_ , lands strikes with pinpoint accuracy. Charges, sometimes, using her own biotics to fling herself forward somehow.

It ends in less than a minute.

And when it's over, she's the only one standing.

"Get down here, Archangel," the Spectre says, voice a little deeper here than it is when the masks are off. "I saw you on my way in."

Rather than answer her, rather than obey her, the Archangel leaves.

* * *

Archangel makes his way across the Citadel's skyline. The judgment that lingers above; that's his style, always was. Even when he worked with her.

The Spectre laughed, once. Long ago. Before that damned human biotic and Virmire, before her own choices and hidebound honor ruined it all. It feels like it was another life. It slips away from his grasp, hard to recall. Everything went so wrong.

But she used to laugh. For him. Sometimes at him. She'd called him the Citadel's own personal Doom of Damocles. He'd spent two days on the extranet with a special "no Fornax-related results" filter trying to figure out just what she'd even been talking about.

But for the Citadel, it's true.

He shouldn't even be here. He changed his hunting-ground. He protects Omega, now. Alone. Not with her.

He runs from the thoughts, navigates the skyscrapers with ease. Doesn't even need one of the cars.

But always, he catches a swath of gray in the blackness, a strip of red. It hovers at the corner of his vision.

She dogs him. It's a silent order, a demand that he stop and talk. He keeps running.

* * *

He swings into the hole in the wall he's found. Goes in through a broken window and ignores the fact that it looks less like a satellite apartment and more like a base camp. It's not much, but he'll only be in town a few more days. Long enough to track the shipment and take care of it, since the Spectre's taken care of the recipients.

He doesn't need it to be much. If he lets himself love this city again, he'll never leave. Never go back to Omega.

He's still checking his territory, checking data, cooling down and decompressing when he hears the click of a hardsuit's boots against the only entrance alcove remaining.

The rifle's not to hand. He has time, barely, to draw his pistol in a motion that looks smoother than he feels.

"Garrus," she says, voice still deeper than it should be.

And that makes no damned sense. That voice means she's still the Spectre; what makes her think she can use names? Personal names, anyway.

"There are differences," he snaps. "Contexts, Spectre."

He taps his helmet with one finger. He doesn't strip the armor until he's done for the night, and he'd been far from done.

He's still wearing the helmet, there he hasn't made the transition from Archangel to Garrus yet. And she's the one who taught him that separation.

What gives her the right to ignore it now?

"Don't give me that. You don't drop back into my city, without my permission, after saying you'll never come back, and play that game."

The Spectre's city. The Spectre's rules. He knows how she works, knows it all too well.

So he doesn't say anything.

She's silent a while, and then at last she sighs. "Garrus, if you'd just called ahead, I could have added an auxillary work station for you. The Operative would have been happy to recalibrate the armory for you."

So he's Garrus, but Jacob is the Operative? Good to know. "Glad to hear he's working out."

"He was never in the field the way we were," she says, softly. As if that's supposed to make anything better.

He doesn't say anything. What is there to say? Virmire scared her, shook her, and rather than deal with it, she shut him out of the thing she'd taught him to do. The one thing that gave him hope for this shit of a galaxy they were all stuck in.

"That party you crashed," he says instead, when he can talk at all. "They were from Omega. Mine."

"Nobody here is yours."

Is she talking about the thugs or herself?

The Archangel shakes his head. "You don't get to decide that anymore."

And the Spectre, unflappable, unshakable, stoic Spectre, nearly snarls, "The Citadel is _mine_."

That same, too-deep voice. Too many memories of listening to that voice speak nothing but incontrovertible reason. Too many memories of hearing that voice and wanting to scream. Too many memories of pushing her to shout in higher and higher pitches, while the modulator scrambled to keep up.

"Are you going to tell me that I have to ask permission to hunt scum from my station to yours?"

"Yes."

Her turf, her rules. It's always been her way or the highway. She's high-handed, pigheaded. And he's never been much better, too damned stubborn to quit when he should have, too damned stubborn to die when the Prophet wanted him to, too damned stubborn to die on Virmire.

Well, that doesn't mean the Archangel has to like it, or that Garrus has to listen.

He pops the clasps, pulls the helmet off. He sets it down on his workstation, watches her warily.

The Spectre lifts her own helmet from her face. She even peels the modulator off her throat.

She's Shepard now.

"I don't make exceptions." She leaves the _Especially not for you_ unspoken.

"You can't shut me out on this."

"You keep saying you're not one of mine anymore," she says, and she sounds almost sad. "You can't come back and expect me to treat you like you are."

"What, I'm supposed to pretennd you never kicked me out of the one thing —"

"Damn it, Garrus! You're being irrational."

Of course he is. He's never been totally rational where she's concerned. That's why she's still here and he's cleaning up Omega. He tells the Machinist he'll come back when he's done there, but they all know he'll never be done there.

He takes a step toward her. "I was chasing filth from Omega."

She mimics him, stepping closer. Her expression is serious, still a little angry. "And if you'd called ahead, it wouldn't have been a problem."

Her aggressive stance, her crack about calling ahead… They make him wonder.

"Did you ruin my bust just to make a point?"

It's like some sort of game, each moving forward to see who backs off first. Only they've both out-stubborned death.

"Why bother? I knew we'd be doing this."

"You're going to try to claim you were in the neighborhood? Just dropping in to make sure everything was alright?"

She says nothing. She cranes her neck to keep looking him in the eye, even as she steps even closer.

"You can't expect me to believe that," he all but growls.

This time she's close enough that he almost thinks she's about to shout in his face. "It's not _about_ you, Garrus. It wasn't personal."

"Sure, it wasn't. And I'm selling genuine parts from the Prophet's ship."

Shepard bridges the gap. Only instead of her getting right up next to his mouth, to show him she's not afraid of him, she bumps her forehead against his.

His traitorous hands fly to her shoulders immediately. He's wanted this, he's missed this. There was passion there, once, when she wasn't with that biotic, when could still laugh. And tenderness, sometimes.

Like this gesture.

He draws in a breath, lets it out. The sound's ragged, like it has to cut its way out of his throat.

"Shepard," he says.

"Don't."

So he doesn't. He just focuses on unbuckling her hardsuit. It's been too long since he stripped her like this, still with a few jitters from the hunt, if not the fight.

They're both greedy. She tosses away his armor, careless, and runs her fingers along his plates. Presses her teeth against them in the just the right places to make him squirm.

So he traces her. She's the same shape, the same size, but she has new scars. Ferocious burn marks all along her rib cage, a new stab wound to the thigh, a sequence of bullet pockmarks tracing the line of her clavicle.

Time hasn't stood still for either of them.

She traces the scar that winds its way along his jaw, then a slight discoloration of his plates. It's where the heat nearly melted his armor to his skin.

He rakes his fingers along the back of her head, drawing a gasp from her. But when she looks up at him, her eyes are a challenge.

One of them is going to win.

He digs his fingers into the back of her neck, rubs his cheek against hers as harshly as he dares. With his other hand, he traces the sharp points of his talons along her.

She leans into him. He lets her. Then she bites his throat and laughs at his surprise.

Two can play that game.

He's careless of his talons when he strips her of the skinsuit she wears beneath her armor. At his touch, thin red lines appear on her skin.

She's soft, fragile. Between the hardsuit and the modulated voice, he always forgets just how delicate she is. Having her out of it makes her every tiny victory into a miracle.

How has she survived this long? Come to think of it, how has he?

Garrus throws his head back and laughs. It turns to a startled noise when she leans away from him, that damnable challenge still in her eyes. A satisfied smile plays on her lips; she's not content to watch him undress, she has to help.

He tries to shrug away from her, determined to keep the upper hand here. But this isn't their first time, certainly not their first time after a hunt. Despite her shaking hands, despite his own, her every movement is certain. Confident.

Garrus shrugs out of the last scrap of cloth, growling at her to keep her distance.

She doesn't, of course. She wraps her legs around his waist, presses close to him.

He turns to settle her against the workstation. Trails his claws up her thighs and relishes the way she gasps.

She scrapes her far blunter nails along the plates on his back.

Somehow, she gets leverage. Locks her knee in the joint of his own and pushes.

He stumbles backwards, holds in a snarl as she reverses their positions. She pushes him up against the workstation, straddles him.

There's no way he's letting her top without a fight. He digs into her back and stands, lifting her with him.

She bites again. This time her teeth dig into one of the sensitive spots not covered by his plates, at the junction of shoulder and throat.

A breath whistles through his teeth; he digs in harder, until she hisses too. But she doesn't let up. She jabs his thigh with a knee and his leg nearly buckles.

"Dirty trick," he growls into her hair, for once hearing the under-echo of his second voice.

She just smiles frostily and levers him against the desk.

They both freeze when she looks down.

The next second, he's scrambling madly, turned around beneath her on the desk. Reaching for the drawers, digging through them frantically while she holds him by the fringe.

"Why do you always forget until the last second?" She growls in his ear.

"Oh, right, blame me," he replies, finally ripping a drawer out of its slot.

He sorts through it without patience, even while her fingers tighten on the back of his head. He tosses things across the room and breathes a sigh of relief when he finds a condom.

She doesn't let him up yet. One of her knees digs into his back to keep him down. She lets out a breath against the back of his neck and he shifts his weight, trying to test her grip.

She knows what she's doing, though; none of his bucking gives him any room to break free.

When she finally lets him turn around, her mouth curves into a wicked smirk. He rolls the condom on while she watches without the smile she used to wear.

She straddles him again, slides her hips until he fills her. Some women might close their eyes; she never looks away from him. Her expression is one of total control.

She stays that way, even when they move together.

They find their rhythm. She slides along him, smooth enough to make him ache and he crashes into her hard enough to hurt. She's quiet through the whole thing, not even gasping for breath; he's loud, because he's missed this and he's not ashamed.

They're both silent in the aftermath.

" _This_ was personal."

He laughs at that, harsh and ragged. "Just leave the suppliers to me, will you?"

"Only if you get there first, Archangel."


End file.
